I'm finding the Asian marketing for the film really interesting. It's intriguing to try to look at things from the perspective of somebody with no knowledge of Star Wars. I rewrote the South Korean plot summary in a more vague way to try to think about how they might see it.

An evil order has overtaken a faraway land. A strong general leads a resistance against the order. She has sent a young girl confused about her place in the world and unsure of her recently awakened magical powers to meet an ancient hero from the past and bring him back into the fight.

Through the ancient hero, the young girl unexpectedly communes with a member of the evil order, a young man struggling to find his place just like her. What shocking destiny awaits them?

This might just be my favourite Kylo cover to date, along with the EW one. He looks so magnetic and gorgeous.

I really love the Eastern promotion, I think it does a better job at getting me excited for the movie. It's a lot more straightforward because it's less focused on "preserving the twists" and avoiding spoilers at all costs. I also love how RJ repeatedly defends Kylo's character and emphasises how he is different from his grandfather. I took his reply to one of the sceptics ("I'll be curious as to how you feel about the handling of his character in this episode") as yet another subtle confirmation that the audience is going to feel very different about Ben Solo by the end of the second instalment, which directly points at his inevitable redemption and possible shift of allegiances. There's also DR's interview from today, courtesy of Sleemo:

“I think the thing about this film is that the lines are less clear between good and bad. Rey’s trying to find out about herself and about the universe and those questions don’t entirely fall to the good, nor do they entirely fall to the bad. She’s trying to do her own sort of personal growth and I think what’s amazing is that at the end of the film, however that does end, it’s more rich because if it’s always good, the outcome isn’t as important as it might be. There’s blurred lines.”

— Daisy Ridley on whether Rey goes to the dark side in The Last Jedi, GMA

@MyOnlyHope wrote:I'm finding the Asian marketing for the film really interesting. It's intriguing to try to look at things from the perspective of somebody with no knowledge of Star Wars. I rewrote the South Korean plot summary in a more vague way to try to think about how they might see it.

An evil order has overtaken a faraway land. A strong general leads a resistance against the order. She has sent a young girl confused about her place in the world and unsure of her recently awakened magical powers to meet an ancient hero from the past and bring him back into the fight.

Through the ancient hero, the young girl unexpectedly communes with a member of the evil order, a young man struggling to find his place just like her. What shocking destiny awaits them?

As an enthusiastic of Asian culture (I read mangas/manhwas since I was a little girl and watch K/J/T dramas for over 10 years) I can say that they love stories about naive (but brave and cool) girls and bad boys (who will turn into good boys, due to their love for the girl). They are also fascinated with the physical differences between couples (taller one/smaller one). I'm not surprised to see that they love Reylo, because Reylo fits their couple cliche very well.

About that quote from Daisy about Rey potentially falling to the Dark Side... I’m seeing people saying on Tumblr that Daisy pretty much confirmed that Rey is falling to the Dark Side… but I kinda disagree? I could be wrong, but it really seemed like she implied that Light and Dark would become really blurred concepts in the movie.

So, I dunno - wouldn’t Rey falling to the Dark Side kind of compromise that perspective? Does it rather mean she’s heading towards more of a grey area where she isn’t restricted by binaries?

(Plus we’ve seen plenty of characters falling to the Dark Side in SW already, and we are going to see Ben’s Fall, it’s getting repetitive already)

@Irina de France wrote:About that quote from Daisy about Rey potentially falling to the Dark Side... I’m seeing people saying on Tumblr that Daisy pretty much confirmed that Rey is falling to the Dark Side… but I kinda disagree? I could be wrong, but it really seemed like she implied that Light and Dark would become really blurred concepts in the movie.

So, I dunno - wouldn’t Rey falling to the Dark Side kind of compromise that perspective? Does it rather mean she’s heading towards more of a grey area where she isn’t restricted by binaries?

(Plus we’ve seen plenty of characters falling to the Dark Side in SW already, and we are going to see Ben’s Fall, it’s getting repetitive already)

@Irina de FranceLol, she didn't confirm Rey falls to the dark side. When asked she went into a small speech about blurred lines and Rey wanting to find her place. She finishes by saying the conclusion is powerful because the movie explores the concepts of light and dark as more ambiguous.

@Kessel - I know, even if we get her in the film and whatever role she played in writing the screenplay, characters, and stories, this is mos def a moment in our culture about misogyny and how women have been treated by the entertainment industry where her voice is missing. Including the insights she had before she even was in the first movie thanks to her mother's career/battle against the machine. Instead we'll get a boring as Hell press junket (and sorry, Mark Hamill is certainly a very nice guy & has a good a sense of humor but he's not a genius social critic/raconteur the way Carrie was). Anyways, I think we'll see a lot of Debbie and her life battles in this version of Leia, which makes it extra sad that they're both gone. One of my BINGO square predictions should be that the movie will be dedicated to the both of them, which is at least a pretty bad a** footnote for both of them to have on their filmographies.

Otherwise, that Korean marketing!!! Like gosh, there's nothing there about a plucky young girl who finds her long-lost father and they team up to murder her evil cousin who is just awful and doesn't appreciate his mom. The only thing Rey looks in danger of losing in this marketing is @panki's comment that the Skywalker special will be losing your heart. That cleavage though, she also looks like she's in danger of losing her virginity.

Here is a question I've had recently about the ongoing backlash from the more traditionalist corners of the fandom against this topic, both in terms of gender and nationalities. Which traditionally has been the Western/English speaking part of the world. At some point between now and the end of the OT, it somehow got to be very very male (the whole business of when the nerds became the jocks in our culture). People have based their whole identities and among fans, their levels of credibility/visibility/voice on knowledge of and participation in this particular fictional universe. Which happens with all types of creative works and long before Star Wars, like the example of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's love-hate relationship with Sherlock Holmes thanks to the fans. But with the ST, you start to see the new corporate owners reaching out to people who don't fit that core demographic - women/young girls, people of color/non Western nationalities and ethnicities, people whose areas of expertise aren't Pew Pew Pew but things like classic literature/folklore/fairytales, film history, K Drama and Anime fans, et cetera. Basically the fanboys and fangirls (many of whom have been battling to coexist in the same space as the fanboys) who've been fans prior to the ST find that the script has been flipped. That these new fans either don't follow those rules or that they have a better understanding of what the "new rules" are for this fictional universe. Which is likely threatening as Hell, to have to make space for these fans and potentially lose some (or all) of your hegemony. Like I'd love to have an open discussion with the marketing team, especially the international marketing teams, for this franchise because I bet that these are issues they've tracked, in terms of loyal brand customers versus reaching out to new ones in new demographics/markets. I can't speak to Reddit Tumblr et all, but if you follow the really vocal fans on Twitter, they're almost across the board either American or from the British Commonwealth. Versus here, where we have a really fascinating mix of predominantly female community members, but from I'd bet those of us who are the native English speakers US/British Commonwealth are outnumbered by the rest of you.

@snufkin I've grown up in France and in Quebec - and let me tell you, mentality in France is VERY different from North America, and even in Quebec, you can see the cultural difference between anglophones and francophones (also, French feminism is different from Anglo-American feminism, in so many ways. I should write up an essay on the differences one of these days).

Thing is - Anglo-American mentalities are very much influenced by Protestantism, most especially the more Puritanical branches. Because of that, there is a lot more pearl-clutching, more moral purity ("will someone think of the children" and everything). Quebec is admittedly a bit of a special case (I'll spare you the history lesson), but when it comes to culture and the arts in general, France has always been a lot less conservative than the UK and the US, and that goes way back to the 17th century. Of course, there was the case of Charles Baudelaire and Les Fleurs du Mal, which pretty much demonstrates that there were still lines that weren't to be crossed, but there was still more slack given to authors for certain themes than in other countries, so to say.

@MyOnlyHope wrote:I'm finding the Asian marketing for the film really interesting. It's intriguing to try to look at things from the perspective of somebody with no knowledge of Star Wars. I rewrote the South Korean plot summary in a more vague way to try to think about how they might see it.

An evil order has overtaken a faraway land. A strong general leads a resistance against the order. She has sent a young girl confused about her place in the world and unsure of her recently awakened magical powers to meet an ancient hero from the past and bring him back into the fight.

Through the ancient hero, the young girl unexpectedly communes with a member of the evil order, a young man struggling to find his place just like her. What shocking destiny awaits them?

I'm very interested in the cultural differences between the American vs the Asian marketing that's why I asked an Asian Reylo fan on tumblr about why she thinks their marketing is much more straightforward and that's what she told me:

In Japan TFA was really popular, actually. I think the reason we have more straightforward marketing for it is a few reasons:1) the movie culture is different. In America, it’s very common just to see a movie whenever. But in Asia, we tend to only go for special occasions, and only if we really feel it’s worth it to pay the expense of a ticket. So you really need to entice us to get there by telling us what the movie is actually about.2) Because of the above culture, it’s my opinion that it would go over poorly if they outright lied or misled our audiences. Because, we don’t care so much about the twists and turns of the film – the point for Asian audiences [I think] is that we just want to see the journey it takes to get there… HOW do characters get to the point that they interact in [x] way? So, it’s less about being surprising, and more about enticing us to be invested in wanting to watch the story unfold. Often our marketing includes some hyperbole [”BIGGEST TWIST IN THE FRANCHISE”] mixed with big indicators of the major plot points and often even spoilers of the result of the film. Again – it’s the journey for our audience, so a little spoilers don’t bother us [at least, this is how I feel about the culture here].3) We don’t have the speculation culture around Star Wars in Asia that America has. The old Star Wars are kind of known here, but not that many people have seen them, to be honest. The new ones are mostly a brand new thing for audiences here – it’s novelty, not nostalgia. So, with that in mind, it makes less sense to be all ~mysterious~ about where the plot is headed, since audiences won’t be making a big buzz about it here. The speculating and theorizing isn’t going to be what draws us to the theater. For us, it’s a matter of being invested in these characters and their stories.4) Enemies-to-lovers is hands down the most popular romantic dynamic in movies for Asian countries. It’s everywhere, so they’re going to milk it if that’s what’s happening. They’re being more subtle than I guess they normally would because they know they have to preserve the “mystery” across the world… but they’re being as blatantly obvious as they can for Asian audiences that there is forbidden, tenuous romance in this film. They’re doing that because it sells – but I also believe they won’t be lying, because you don’t want to mislead an Asian audience… we don’t care to be misled by the marketing, and it would probably just confuse people and turn them off to the next film. This is all just my opinion, though. I haven’t taken a nationwide survey or anything, lol. https://jediwhinetrick.tumblr.com/post/167980190682/since-youre-a-native-i-was-wondering-can-you

@Irina de France - the strains of the Puritans is definitely a strong factor. And maybe it's because I've spent a lot of time around French people (they make the best roommates, you never have to cook dinner & they'll go see weird movies with you), that my immediate thought about surrounding Rey with 3 gorgeous leading men was that she should just hook up with all of them but that doesn't mean she has to have an actual relationship/romance with any of them. Though I'm glad with the hints we're getting because the hormonal angsty nerd drama we'll likely get from those two together will be awkward comedy gold.